During pregnancy, many women are pampered and cared for more than at any other time of their lives. Husbands are attentive, family members call to see how the mom-to-be is feeling, and friends host baby showers, lavishing a woman with gifts and attention.But what happens after the baby arrives? Suddenly, pampering of the mother stops and attention shifts to the needs of the baby. The new mother, though physically drained from the rigors of childbirth, gets to work caring not only for her newborn but for others in the household as well.
It doesn’t have to be that way, explains Claudia Kolker in her new book, “The Immigrant Advantage: What We Can Learn From Newcomers to America About Health, Happiness and Hope.” This is not a book about immigration — although it should be mandatory reading for lawmakers debating immigration policy. Instead, it’s a book about best practices and the traditions that immigrants bring with them to this country that could benefit the rest of us.
“I am a convert,” writes Ms. Kolker, a contributing editor to The Houston Chronicle whose reporting career took her to El Salvador, Cuba, Haiti and India, among other places. “Many of these practices are so elegant and efficient at reaching American goals, I believe newcomers need to hang on to them. And the rest of us should consider trying them out for ourselves.”
I recently spoke with Ms. Kolker about the lessons we can learn from immigrants, why hot chocolate is good for new mothers and an ancient pampering ritual called the cuarentena. Here’s our conversation.
Q.Most of us associate immigration with hardship. Why is your book called “The Immigrant Advantage”?
A.My book is about the really smart practices that first-generation immigrants do that help them achieve goals that Americans like myself really want — healthier moms, school success, thrift, the ability to save on a tight budget, how to finance a house or a Ph.D. on a modest budget. Things all of us would really like. These are practices that originated in other countries that translate particularly well in this country.
Q.What do we know about the health of immigrants?
A.There is something called the immigrant paradox that actually shows an immigrant advantage in terms of longevity, infant health, mental health. There are certain elements to the immigrant profile that are very healthy. In many markers, first-generation immigrants tend to be healthier than native-born Americans.
It’s a paradox. Nobody has fully explained it, but the consensus is that self-selection has a lot to do with it. You’re not going to leave your country and everything you know if you have poor health and don’t have confidence you can make your way in the world. There is an attitude that seems typical of immigrants who leave everything they know because they want to improve their family’s life. And right now we are grappling with a lot of health challenges that are connected to our affluence. Immigrants come from places where they don’t have these advantages, and paradoxically, they don’t have some of the health problems we have.
Q.Tell me about this unique practice of mothering the mother that is common among immigrants.
A.It’s called the cuarentena. It sounds like “quarantine,” but it refers to 40 days. In traditional Hispanic culture, as well as many cultures around the world, there is a real ritual attached to the first 40 days or so after a woman has a baby. We attach a lot of ritual to the time before the baby, with baby showers and foods to eat or not to eat during pregnancy and coddling the mother. We don’t really have a prescription for after a baby is born.
But in Mexican culture, it’s highly ritualized. The idea is that women family members traditionally surround a mother and help bathe and clean and diaper the baby. But really the focus of the attention is the well-being and safety and health of the mother for 40 days. The poorer and more rural and more remote a community is, the more likely it is that they are going to take this ritual seriously.
Q.Is it a challenge for immigrants to duplicate the experience in this country?
A.There is no way to duplicate it because you don’t have the family structure or even the architecture. In a Chiapas village in Mexico, you are required to have an aromatherapy sauna at least twice during the 40 days. There are stone structures on the sides of mountains where you go for your ritual sauna. It makes a mom feel pretty good. There is a woman in the community who is a traditional postpartum massage therapist. You can’t recreate all these things, but what they try hard to do is recreate the intensive care, the idea that the new mother is as vulnerable in many ways as a newborn baby.
Q.Can you describe what happens during a cuarentena in this country?
A.In my book I write about spending time in Akron, Ohio, with first-generation laborers from Chiapas. They don’t have an extended family of mothers and sisters. What I found in Akron, which does not happen in Mexico, is that it was men who were taking care of their wives. They were insistent that their wives observe the cuarentena as best they could manage. The women were not allowed to touch a dish or sweep the floor. There was a man who had never touched a broom before. In some cases, they would drive their wives crazy because they didn’t really know how to clean a house. But that was the level of investment in a new mother that they have.
Q.What are some of the foods given to women during the cuarentena?
A.There are very prescribed rituals and foods. If there is chicken, she gets chicken soup. She is given hot chocolate – they have this whole system of certain foods that are cold and not suitable for a postpartum mom. You want to keep her body warm and her system warm. Foods like cucumbers are considered inappropriate for a recovering mother. There are emotions that are considered hot and cold that you need to protect her from. Anger is a cold, frosty emotion, and you need to protect a mother from feeling it or witnessing it.
One food is atole, a comfort drink made from toasted corn and thickened with milk and sugar. It has a lot of symbolic meaning because this is a culture that has revered corn as a divine gift. It’s very good for you. The iron in it is easily absorbed. But it also takes a lot of care to cook it. You have to cook it slowly and reheat it, and every time you give it to someone, you need to reheat it, add water and stir. What I found was that it really seemed to be about the amount of attention and love and engagement with the mother’s well-being.
Q.What else happens during the cuarentena?
A.The mother is supposed to rest. She only has two jobs. One is to cuddle and enjoy her baby. The other is to learn how to breast-feed from experts. Nobody says “wing it” or “nature will take its course.’’ People will help you. There are no expectations that this is easy or spontaneous.
Q.Does this mothering of the mother happen around the world?
A.There is a version of the cuarentena in many, many cultures. The length of time can vary. Chinese women lounge in seclusion for 30 days, while the Onitsha women of Nigeria rest for three months. From South Asia to the Philippines, the Middle East to South America, new mothers and their babies rest for 40 days.
Q.Why is it 40 days?
A.The number 40 has a lot of mystical significance throughout history. There is a lot of biology attached. It takes about 40 days for your reproductive organs to return to their ordinary shape after having a baby. There is an observation about how the human body works and the cycle of nature, and I believe a lot of the folklore follows that.
Q.Is there a take-home message from all the stories you collected for your book?
A.One of the things I learned is this idea of permission — permission to take care of yourself, to ask for help. This felt very revolutionary to me. It also entails giving help — stepping up and being there and not just sending an e-mail or gift basket, with the understanding that you will be helped in the same way. It’s the power of a group of people getting together at their best to do difficult things. With a cuarentena, you’re not alone. It’s difficult being a new mother. To be surrounded, to have other people on the team, it’s a happy atmosphere. It helps you get through it.
Source: New York Times - By Tara-Parker-Pope
It doesn’t have to be that way, explains Claudia Kolker in her new book, “The Immigrant Advantage: What We Can Learn From Newcomers to America About Health, Happiness and Hope.” This is not a book about immigration — although it should be mandatory reading for lawmakers debating immigration policy. Instead, it’s a book about best practices and the traditions that immigrants bring with them to this country that could benefit the rest of us.
“I am a convert,” writes Ms. Kolker, a contributing editor to The Houston Chronicle whose reporting career took her to El Salvador, Cuba, Haiti and India, among other places. “Many of these practices are so elegant and efficient at reaching American goals, I believe newcomers need to hang on to them. And the rest of us should consider trying them out for ourselves.”
I recently spoke with Ms. Kolker about the lessons we can learn from immigrants, why hot chocolate is good for new mothers and an ancient pampering ritual called the cuarentena. Here’s our conversation.
Q.Most of us associate immigration with hardship. Why is your book called “The Immigrant Advantage”?
A.My book is about the really smart practices that first-generation immigrants do that help them achieve goals that Americans like myself really want — healthier moms, school success, thrift, the ability to save on a tight budget, how to finance a house or a Ph.D. on a modest budget. Things all of us would really like. These are practices that originated in other countries that translate particularly well in this country.
Q.What do we know about the health of immigrants?
A.There is something called the immigrant paradox that actually shows an immigrant advantage in terms of longevity, infant health, mental health. There are certain elements to the immigrant profile that are very healthy. In many markers, first-generation immigrants tend to be healthier than native-born Americans.
It’s a paradox. Nobody has fully explained it, but the consensus is that self-selection has a lot to do with it. You’re not going to leave your country and everything you know if you have poor health and don’t have confidence you can make your way in the world. There is an attitude that seems typical of immigrants who leave everything they know because they want to improve their family’s life. And right now we are grappling with a lot of health challenges that are connected to our affluence. Immigrants come from places where they don’t have these advantages, and paradoxically, they don’t have some of the health problems we have.
Q.Tell me about this unique practice of mothering the mother that is common among immigrants.
A.It’s called the cuarentena. It sounds like “quarantine,” but it refers to 40 days. In traditional Hispanic culture, as well as many cultures around the world, there is a real ritual attached to the first 40 days or so after a woman has a baby. We attach a lot of ritual to the time before the baby, with baby showers and foods to eat or not to eat during pregnancy and coddling the mother. We don’t really have a prescription for after a baby is born.
But in Mexican culture, it’s highly ritualized. The idea is that women family members traditionally surround a mother and help bathe and clean and diaper the baby. But really the focus of the attention is the well-being and safety and health of the mother for 40 days. The poorer and more rural and more remote a community is, the more likely it is that they are going to take this ritual seriously.
Q.Is it a challenge for immigrants to duplicate the experience in this country?
A.There is no way to duplicate it because you don’t have the family structure or even the architecture. In a Chiapas village in Mexico, you are required to have an aromatherapy sauna at least twice during the 40 days. There are stone structures on the sides of mountains where you go for your ritual sauna. It makes a mom feel pretty good. There is a woman in the community who is a traditional postpartum massage therapist. You can’t recreate all these things, but what they try hard to do is recreate the intensive care, the idea that the new mother is as vulnerable in many ways as a newborn baby.
Q.Can you describe what happens during a cuarentena in this country?
A.In my book I write about spending time in Akron, Ohio, with first-generation laborers from Chiapas. They don’t have an extended family of mothers and sisters. What I found in Akron, which does not happen in Mexico, is that it was men who were taking care of their wives. They were insistent that their wives observe the cuarentena as best they could manage. The women were not allowed to touch a dish or sweep the floor. There was a man who had never touched a broom before. In some cases, they would drive their wives crazy because they didn’t really know how to clean a house. But that was the level of investment in a new mother that they have.
Q.What are some of the foods given to women during the cuarentena?
A.There are very prescribed rituals and foods. If there is chicken, she gets chicken soup. She is given hot chocolate – they have this whole system of certain foods that are cold and not suitable for a postpartum mom. You want to keep her body warm and her system warm. Foods like cucumbers are considered inappropriate for a recovering mother. There are emotions that are considered hot and cold that you need to protect her from. Anger is a cold, frosty emotion, and you need to protect a mother from feeling it or witnessing it.
One food is atole, a comfort drink made from toasted corn and thickened with milk and sugar. It has a lot of symbolic meaning because this is a culture that has revered corn as a divine gift. It’s very good for you. The iron in it is easily absorbed. But it also takes a lot of care to cook it. You have to cook it slowly and reheat it, and every time you give it to someone, you need to reheat it, add water and stir. What I found was that it really seemed to be about the amount of attention and love and engagement with the mother’s well-being.
Q.What else happens during the cuarentena?
A.The mother is supposed to rest. She only has two jobs. One is to cuddle and enjoy her baby. The other is to learn how to breast-feed from experts. Nobody says “wing it” or “nature will take its course.’’ People will help you. There are no expectations that this is easy or spontaneous.
Q.Does this mothering of the mother happen around the world?
A.There is a version of the cuarentena in many, many cultures. The length of time can vary. Chinese women lounge in seclusion for 30 days, while the Onitsha women of Nigeria rest for three months. From South Asia to the Philippines, the Middle East to South America, new mothers and their babies rest for 40 days.
Q.Why is it 40 days?
A.The number 40 has a lot of mystical significance throughout history. There is a lot of biology attached. It takes about 40 days for your reproductive organs to return to their ordinary shape after having a baby. There is an observation about how the human body works and the cycle of nature, and I believe a lot of the folklore follows that.
Q.Is there a take-home message from all the stories you collected for your book?
A.One of the things I learned is this idea of permission — permission to take care of yourself, to ask for help. This felt very revolutionary to me. It also entails giving help — stepping up and being there and not just sending an e-mail or gift basket, with the understanding that you will be helped in the same way. It’s the power of a group of people getting together at their best to do difficult things. With a cuarentena, you’re not alone. It’s difficult being a new mother. To be surrounded, to have other people on the team, it’s a happy atmosphere. It helps you get through it.
Source: New York Times - By Tara-Parker-Pope
RSS Feed
